Selects: Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 2

**Josh Clark** (0:00)
Okay, everyone, buckle up for the thrilling conclusion of A Ron Contra, Shady in the 80s, part two.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:13)
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

**Josh Clark** (0:23)
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles Dibby, Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff You Should Know, A Ron Contra, part two, starting now. Go!

**Chuck Bryant** (0:34)
Maybe we should do a quick catch up.

**Josh Clark** (0:36)
Oh, okay.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:38)
Well, we're still going. You act like I just went to sleep.

**Josh Clark** (0:41)
No, it's true.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:43)
So what's going on here is, the United States is, Congress has decided that we cannot fund the Contras to fight the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Shut off funding. So the Reagan administration makes a deep covert push to continue doing so through a bunch of fun and shady ways.

**Josh Clark** (1:07)
Right. They're fundraising. They're directly arming the Contras. They're training them, doing all sorts of crazy stuff.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:14)
Yes, but if you know that this is about Iran-Contra, and you're like, what about Iran? What's going on here? I haven't heard anything about Iran.

**Josh Clark** (1:22)
Keep your socks on.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:23)
Well, here we go. This is where Iran enters the picture.

**Josh Clark** (1:26)
Right. You can take your socks off.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:28)
All right.

**Josh Clark** (1:29)
Go. Are your socks on?

**Chuck Bryant** (1:32)
I've got on little footy socks, yeah.

**Josh Clark** (1:33)
I do too.
Cool. Oh, Jerry does too. Sweet. It's the way to go.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:39)
Jerry has those true footies where you can't even see him at all.

**Josh Clark** (1:42)
I can see you.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:43)
Mine peek out just a little, which I'm not a huge fan of.

**Josh Clark** (1:46)
Well, check out mine.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:47)
Yeah, no see-hams.

**Josh Clark** (1:48)
No see-hams. Okay.
Enter Iran. If we really... That was a great intro, and it just went away.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:56)
That's right.

**Josh Clark** (1:57)
So, on the other side of the world, from Nicaragua, there was another foreign policy disaster simmering that Reagan had going, and it was in the form of Iran. And specifically, it wasn't even in the form of Iran. It was in the form of a problem that America had. Doesn't really have much these days, but definitely did in the 70s and 80s, where Americans would be taken hostage around the world.
But specifically, almost exclusively, by Lebanese terrorists who were, if not working on behalf of Iran, were definitely sponsored by Iran. And regardless of who was president, the fact that they were hostages being held by another country, and there wasn't anything we could do about it, that was a real blemish on the presidency. It was not a very proud thing to think about for America, but that was this reality for a while there.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:50)
Yeah, so Iran at the time, this is the early 80s. This is just a few years removed from the Iranian Revolution of 1979 And this is where we've talked about it before. Go look up photos of Iran in the mid 70s, pre-revolution, and it looks like London in the swinging 60s and 70s.

**Josh Clark** (3:07)
Yeah.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:08)
Very kind of hip place to be.
Iranian Revolution happens. Fundamentals take control of the government. There was previously the Shah of Iran, who was friendly to the West, friendly to America generally. And the Ayatollah Khomeini, Khomeini?

**Josh Clark** (3:27)
I've always heard Khomeini.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:28)
Khomeini installed Islamic theocracy, and bad things started happening pretty quickly.

**Josh Clark** (3:35)
Yeah, it was about as quick a turn about face politically and socially as you could imagine.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:43)
Yeah, for a whole country.

**Josh Clark** (3:44)
Yeah.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:45)
But not everyone in the country, as we'll learn, like the whole country didn't just change overnight.

**Josh Clark** (3:50)
No, but the Islamic theocracy was in power, very much so. One of the things that happened was they were not very fond of America or Americans, and the American embassy was famously stormed. And 66 Americans working there were taking hostage and held for more than a year.

**Chuck Bryant** (4:09)
Man, that was like... This is stuff I really remember.

**Josh Clark** (4:13)
Like 440 days or something.

**Chuck Bryant** (4:15)
Yeah, 444 days.

**Josh Clark** (4:17)
Man.

**Chuck Bryant** (4:18)
The Iranian hostage crisis. I remember this as a nine-year-old, very clearly.

**Josh Clark** (4:23)
Really?

**Chuck Bryant** (4:24)
Oh, yeah.

**Josh Clark** (4:24)
I have no recollection of it.